Friday, March 7, 2014

It Must Be Nice To Be A Leftist Billionaire: The Government Sells You Subsidized Jet Fuel

In a letter to an Iowa senator (PDF), NASA’s associate administrator for legislative and intergovernmental affairs admits the agency was selling jet fuel at below market rates to H2-11, a company owned by the founders of Google.

Senator Chuck Grassley says he received the letter on Thursday although it's dated Feb. 24. In the letter, NASA's Seth Statler writes, “in light of the concerns expressed with those agreements, NASA has reviewed its pricing approach and…is now charging a ‘market rate’ for aviation fuel at Ames research center.”

Last September, NBC Bay Area examined seven years of fuel records from 2007 through 2013. According to those records, NASA sold to H2-11 discounted jet fuel that was then used to fly a private 757, a 767 and 5 other luxury aircraft all over the world. H2-11’s principle owners are the same as Google's: Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.

Government is primarily a mechanism for redistributing wealth upward, with the occasional scrap thrown to the poor. And this is pretty typical.